Where has the Peasants' blood and coffin money gone into? Sporns are treated worse than rubbish by the Familee after they've outlived their usefulness!
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Nursing homes lack palliative care
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>They are ill-equipped to care for elderly ill </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By April Chong
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Many elderly folk like Madam Tan Whye Choo, 84, (left) and Madam Doris Tan, 81, do not want to spend their last days in a hospital if they have a choice. -- ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->PANADOL is about the only weapon a nursing home has in its arsenal of medicines to ease pain.
Controlled drugs like morphine are rarely used, as they have to be prescribed by doctors, and facilities are needed to store them.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>What's palliative care?
PALLIATIVE medicine is about improving the quality of life of patients with terminal illnesses such as end-stage cancer and advanced organ failure.
It involves managing pain as well as the social, emotional and spiritual needs of the patients and their relatives.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Spokesmen for nursing homes say they could do with some help in palliative care to relieve suffering among their elderly residents.
Checks with 10 homes, all run by voluntary welfare organisations, showed that between 2 and 20 per cent of their residents could benefit from some expertise in such care.
For now, none can afford to have a full-time nurse in palliative work, a new area in Singapore's health care. Nursing homes here are doing what they can to ease any pain but their focus is still on general care.
Aside from two homes which deal with psychiatric patients, the rest say their terminally-ill residents are not shunted to hospitals to die.
At Peacehaven Nursing Home in Upper Changi Road North, which has almost 400 residents, only 1per cent of them die in a hospital or hospice.
'I don't advocate transferring them to a hospice. This is their house. Old people want to die in their own house,' said executive director Low Mui Lang.
However, at the Sunlove Home along Buangkok View, more than 90 per cent of its elderly residents are usually sent to a hospital when complications occur. This is because the home's focus is on psychiatry and it lacks resources for palliative care, said nursing director Charles Lingham.
Dying a 'good death'' came under the spotlight recently when Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan noted that 55 per cent of people who died here died in hospitals. He wants nursing homes to play a role in easing the pain of the dying, so hospitals can focus on treatment instead of palliative care.
Nursing homes feel that a trained palliative care professional would be a boon, given that many of their doctors - often volunteer general practitioners -drop in only a few times a week at most.
Of the 59 nursing homes here, 29 are charity-run.
Six homes will be picked for a pilot scheme that will involve doctors and nurses from Tan Tock Seng Hospital training their staff in palliative care.
Nursing homes say they already do some form of end-of-life planning. Staff will speak to a resident's family members and doctors on what should be done when the resident's condition takes a turn for the worse.
Most families prefer the resident to remain in the nursing home if the resident is already very old and ill, said Ms Winnie Koh, administrator of Moral Home for the Aged Sick, off Bedok Road.
Some homes, such as All Saints Home in Hougang and Tampines, also try to get family members to submit doctor-endorsed documents on the end-of-life decisions made so that there will be no misunderstandings later.
Chats with six elderly patients from Peacehaven revealed that given a choice, they would not want to spend their last days in a hospital.
'Even if I have to go to a hospital, I still want to come back to the nursing home. I know the people here and they don't scold so much,' said 84-year-old Tan Whye Choo.
If the choice were left to the home, administrator Maria Sim of the Villa Francis Home for the Aged would rather 'journey with them till the end'.
'Dying in a hospital is a very lonely thing,' she said. [email protected]
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Nursing homes lack palliative care
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>They are ill-equipped to care for elderly ill </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By April Chong
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
Many elderly folk like Madam Tan Whye Choo, 84, (left) and Madam Doris Tan, 81, do not want to spend their last days in a hospital if they have a choice. -- ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->PANADOL is about the only weapon a nursing home has in its arsenal of medicines to ease pain.
Controlled drugs like morphine are rarely used, as they have to be prescribed by doctors, and facilities are needed to store them.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>What's palliative care?
PALLIATIVE medicine is about improving the quality of life of patients with terminal illnesses such as end-stage cancer and advanced organ failure.
It involves managing pain as well as the social, emotional and spiritual needs of the patients and their relatives.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Spokesmen for nursing homes say they could do with some help in palliative care to relieve suffering among their elderly residents.
Checks with 10 homes, all run by voluntary welfare organisations, showed that between 2 and 20 per cent of their residents could benefit from some expertise in such care.
For now, none can afford to have a full-time nurse in palliative work, a new area in Singapore's health care. Nursing homes here are doing what they can to ease any pain but their focus is still on general care.
Aside from two homes which deal with psychiatric patients, the rest say their terminally-ill residents are not shunted to hospitals to die.
At Peacehaven Nursing Home in Upper Changi Road North, which has almost 400 residents, only 1per cent of them die in a hospital or hospice.
'I don't advocate transferring them to a hospice. This is their house. Old people want to die in their own house,' said executive director Low Mui Lang.
However, at the Sunlove Home along Buangkok View, more than 90 per cent of its elderly residents are usually sent to a hospital when complications occur. This is because the home's focus is on psychiatry and it lacks resources for palliative care, said nursing director Charles Lingham.
Dying a 'good death'' came under the spotlight recently when Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan noted that 55 per cent of people who died here died in hospitals. He wants nursing homes to play a role in easing the pain of the dying, so hospitals can focus on treatment instead of palliative care.
Nursing homes feel that a trained palliative care professional would be a boon, given that many of their doctors - often volunteer general practitioners -drop in only a few times a week at most.
Of the 59 nursing homes here, 29 are charity-run.
Six homes will be picked for a pilot scheme that will involve doctors and nurses from Tan Tock Seng Hospital training their staff in palliative care.
Nursing homes say they already do some form of end-of-life planning. Staff will speak to a resident's family members and doctors on what should be done when the resident's condition takes a turn for the worse.
Most families prefer the resident to remain in the nursing home if the resident is already very old and ill, said Ms Winnie Koh, administrator of Moral Home for the Aged Sick, off Bedok Road.
Some homes, such as All Saints Home in Hougang and Tampines, also try to get family members to submit doctor-endorsed documents on the end-of-life decisions made so that there will be no misunderstandings later.
Chats with six elderly patients from Peacehaven revealed that given a choice, they would not want to spend their last days in a hospital.
'Even if I have to go to a hospital, I still want to come back to the nursing home. I know the people here and they don't scold so much,' said 84-year-old Tan Whye Choo.
If the choice were left to the home, administrator Maria Sim of the Villa Francis Home for the Aged would rather 'journey with them till the end'.
'Dying in a hospital is a very lonely thing,' she said. [email protected]
